1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a computer-readable recording medium for displaying mail list and a computer-readable recording medium for managing mail that display in a scrollable window of a display unit, a list of e-mails stored in a mailbox of a server connected over a network.
2. Description of the Related Art
There are available web-mail software (hereinafter, “web-mail”) that enable electronic mail (e-mails) to be perused on a browser software rather than a mailer software. In a typical web-mail, only subjects of the e-mails in the mailbox are received previously and displayed in the form of a list on a terminal, and then the content corresponding to the subject selected by the user is downloaded from the mailbox.
If a large number of e-mails is involved, the web-mail displays the list of subjects of the e-mails one screenful (say, ten subjects) at a time. When an instruction for displaying the next ten items in the list is received, the web-mail receives the next ten items from the mailbox and displays them (for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2000-222301).
A technology for refreshing display data without necessitating reloading is available in the form of Asynchronous JavaScript (registered trademark)+XML (Ajax, an asynchronous communication technology). A web-mail using Ajax receives list of subjects of all the e-mails from the mailbox regardless of read and unread, creates a list based on the information received, and displays the list. In addition, the web-mail using Ajax also asynchronously retrieves and stores the contents of the e-mails even before receiving a request to retrieve the contents.
In the web-mail, when the number of e-mails in the mailbox warrants the subjects to be displayed a screenful at a time, the user needs to give the appropriate instruction to display the next page (this operation causes the browser screen to be reloaded). Therefore, the user cannot peruse all the subjects continuously, leading to poor operability.
In the web-mail that uses Ajax, after selecting a mailbox, subjects of all the e-mail are received from the mailbox. Therefore, if the number of e-mails in the selected mailbox is considerable, it will take considerable time to receive the subjects of all the e-mails from the mailbox. Thus, the duration from the time the mailbox is selected up until the time the subjects are displayed is virtually wasted, again leading to poor operability.
In addition, mailer software can be considered to improve operability. However, mailer software generally send and receive mail directly without a mediating server, thus jeopardizing security.